Thursday, September 06, 2012

The Clipping Service - Or How I Turned Into My Mother Without Really Trying

Truth Thursday

Anyone over, say, about 40, who has worked in the non-profit
world remembers the clipping service. It was an off-site newspaper reading
service that your organization would pay to scan all the relevant media every
morning to see if you or your issue was mentioned. In the early days, the
service would literally cut and clip the articles and messenger them over to
your office so that you could be as up to date by midday on the issues of the
day as possible.

The communications department would then copy the best
articles and circulate them around the staff. Sometimes there would be a cover
sheet, and the initials of everyone in your department with a place to check
your name after you had read the attached articles and sent them onto your next
colleague.

Of course, the rise of online media turned the clips into
links, and everything became much easier. Today, my communications department
wakes up at 6:00 in the morning to get the news from Israel, and by the time I
get to my computer by 6:30, I have links to any relevant and late-breaking
news. The clipping serivce still exists, but everything is electronically delivered.

I am a bit of a Facebook addict, not only for the
updates on friends’ lives and comings and goings, but also for the recommended
reading. In many ways, Facebook is like a giant clipping service, offering up
an array of articles throughout the course of the day that have been vetted by
friends and colleagues.

If anything, Twitter is a condensed Facebook in this way,
clip after clip after clip, recommended by people I have chosen to follow. And
on Twitter, you don’t have to see cousin Elaine’s cute meme of a cat or yet
another praiseful prayer of life.

Years ago, long before the ease of hyperlinks, my mother was the original clipping queen. I still have a large
cardboard box filled with many of the articles she sent me over the years, from
college through to young adulthood and after I married and had kids. The
articles she sent me were almost exclusively from the the New York Times, her
primary reading material. And even though I was (and am) a pretty loyal Times
reader as well, she still managed to send me those things that I had missed,
and in which I actually was interested.

Articles about Brooklyn (my home), about Washington, DC (my
adopted home), about my work interests (philanthropy and fundraising), articles
about the issues women faced in the world -- as mothers, as daughters, as sisters,
as employees, as wives, as friends. Articles about traveling to far away places
she had either visited or planned to visit. Articles about books I might enjoy,
movies I might like, theater and dance performances I might attend. There were
articles of every stripe … and especially by and about our shared favorite NYT
columnist at the time – the great Anna Quindlen.

Whenever I open that box, I am carried back to a time and a
place. I get nostalgic about my mother, and her dedication to making sure I saw
things she thought I would enjoy. And I also think about how nice it was to get
a fat envelope in the mail, with a little nugget from my mom, a good article to
read that would still get my hands dirty from the ink, and a moment where I could stop and enjoy a short respite from the other responsibilities of
the day.

Today, we all have our own personal clipping services. Many of us follow hundreds of Facebook friends and
Twitter handles. Our Tweet Decks look like the ticker tape on the floor of the
stock exchange. It would be impossible to keep up with all the information
being fed to us each day, each hour, each minute. Generally speaking, in the
course of a minute, I can have 25-45 new tweets hit my home page.

So I have learned how to filter my feeds – and I am very
selective about which articles I actually will open up and re-share (farewell, Huff Post.) And I am learning how to carefully post my clips – with meaning
and a target audience.

I like when my friends “like” my posts. I get a kick out of
sharing my political interests, the organizations I support, and news about my
neighborhood and larger metropolitan area. I enjoy the convenience of the web,
allowing me to turn into my own personal clipping service without even having
to get out of my chair to get a pair of scissors and an envelope.

And even though technology has changed the way we deliver
the news, it hasn’t changed our desire to share the news. In fact, it has made
it easier. So on I soldier, culling out the best of each day’s offerings and share
it with my friends and family. As my kids get older and begin to launch, they will start to get, if not daily, then at least regular, clips as well.

So the tradition lives on. My mother’s clipping service is alive and well and hyperlinked.